Octopus inspires new camouflage material

An adaptive camouflage in operation in Urbana, Illinois on August 19, 2014 (AFP Photo/John Rogers)

Washington (AFP) - The octopus's ability to camouflage itself has inspired a new kind of thin, flexible fabric that can automatically match patterns, US researchers said Tuesday.

Creatures of the ocean known as cephalopods -- including cuttlefish, squid and octopuses -- are naturally equipped with sensors in their skin that help in some way to mimic the look of their surroundings.

By closely studying how these soft-bodied swimmers do it, engineers and biologists joined in a nearly three-year-long US Navy-funded research collaboration to create a material that acts in a similar way.

The team's initial result, described in this week's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is far from ready for commercial use.

But architects, interior designers, fashion houses and the military all have their eyes on its eventual capability to provide a first-of-its-kind man-made camouflaging material, experts say.

"If you illuminate it with white light and different patterns, it will automatically respond to that and produce a pattern that matches," said lead author John Rogers, a professor in the department of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois.

"Having said that, we are a long way from color-morphing wallpaper, but it is a step that could lead in that direction over time," he told AFP.

The flexible material's layers include temperature-sensitive dye and photosensors that respond in one to two seconds to changing patterns.